Sharks

* Obviously this would’ve been better timed if this was posted several weeks ago, back when the Sharks were finishing up their up 3-0/oops-lose-the-series loss flail job to the Kings, but several other events and stories got in the way. Recently, Doug Wilson and Todd McLellan sat down for a very interesting double-interview on Yahoo Sports Talk Live a few days ago and brought up some of these very same issues. Figured I could weigh back in.

-If you set your franchise up first and foremost to make things comfortable and attractive for your best players, at some point, you’re going to be built primarily around good players who seek comfort first and foremost.

You probably will attract very good, very nice players, as the Sharks have done frequently during in Doug Wilson’s reign. You probably will win many regular-season games and delight the home crowd year after year, during the regular season.

You will have happy players in a happy environment and nobody will ever get mad at anybody and there will be no insidious pressure to do anything other than be happy and be good in the regular season, structured around fan-pleasing stars who smile a lot.

And yet, as the Sharks have proven so often that you’d think they’d have figured it out long ago… comfortable players probably aren’t ones who play the toughest when playoff series get to the breaking point.

* NBA/NHL Bay Area-LA schedule note: The two leagues will be delivering a combined California passion play in a few weeks, looks like. The odds are strong that it’ll be the Sharks vs. Kings (starting around April 15 in SJ) and the Warriors vs. Clippers (starting around April 18 in LA) going simultaneously for at least a few fantastic first-round days. There is true sports hatred in both rivalries. This is going to be very good very soon.

-Just went through the numbers and remaining schedules and it’s clear: With 7 regular-season games left to play, the Warriors look pretty good for the 6th playoff slot and are probably heading to a series vs. the Clippers, who have a solid hold on the 3 seed and probably won’t catch Oklahoma City for the 2 slot.

So, unless the Warriors cough away the 6 seed, it’ll be Warriors vs. Clippers in Round 1, which seemed like a developing 4-5 match-up until things got switched up lately.

After the GSW mini-struggle of late and the LACs consistent run to and certainly well beyond the 54-victory mark, it’s now headed towards a 3-6 meeting.

And this is a good thing for anybody who likes intense, angry, rivalry basketball–because these two teams aren’t fond of each other, have gotten into more than a few scraps recently, and match up surprisingly evenly.

Joe Thornton played like a madcap linebacker tonight–if you were dressed in a Kings uniform and dared to come anywhere near him, he tried to pound or shove or otherwise send you high and flying.

It was quite the sharp-edged performance out of the Sharks captain, at a very important moment, against the hated opponent the Sharks are most likely to draw in the first round of the playoffs.

It ended up as a rock-’em-sock-’em 2-1 Sharks victory at SAP Center, admittedly against a Kings team that was on a back-to-back, didn’t play star goalie Jonathan Quick, and lost defenseman Drew Doughty to an injury in the first period.

Still, it was a big moment, just a few weeks before the start of the playoffs, and Thornton made sure the Sharks were ready for it.

How often am I told that I should stop quarreling on Twitter so much because it’s annoying? Almost every day, often by nice, reasonable readers, which maybe should tell me something.

How likely is it that I’m going to stop actually quarreling on Twitter when the mood strikes me? Extremely unlikely, unless the flow of angry messages and comments halts entirely… so yeah, basically impossible.

First, let me say that I understand that many people do not wish to read the back-and-forth and many more will think this entire item is senseless and overly self-involved–and yes, it is.

But I get so many people telling me how annoying I am, and I do try to answer those comments, too… and I also get so much feedback from readers who are relatively interested in why I do this… and even some wry comments from team executives and players about the Twitter wildfires…

That I figured, what the hell, why not give some sort of explanation for something that annoys so many people and yet I decline to stop doing.

You can admit it: If you’re a 49ers fan or just a person living in the Bay Area half-interested in NFL exploits, over the last year or so you’ve probably wondered about Kaepernick to yourself or you’ve debated it in bars or heard it discussed in living rooms, on television, and perhaps even in the halls of 49ers HQ.

Is he the personification of the NFL’s next wave and leader of the 49ers’ drive to multiple Super Bowls?

Or a gimpy, moody, unreliable teen idol who’ll take the franchise up and down with him? Or just a good young quarterback who didn’t play in an NFL system in college and is working to get a little better every day?

Who knows, it changes every day, it’s all a mystery (that’s why we talk about it so much)–Kaepernick seems capable of all of those things and maybe wants to be most of those things… We can sense all that. That’s all there. It’s all out there in the performance.